


your voice (it carries over)

by staticpetrichor



Series: geraskier snippets [3]
Category: The Witcher (TV), Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: Anxiety, Anxiety Attacks, Apologies, Disassociation, Gen, I love him, I love them both, M/M, SO, Soft Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia, anyway, he's so good in this, if i have to make that into a tag myself I WILL, jaskier has anxiety, maybe only coherent to me??, not established relationship but like, so much love, they gay, this is very rambley and also
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-04
Updated: 2020-05-04
Packaged: 2021-03-02 00:01:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,092
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23995699
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/staticpetrichor/pseuds/staticpetrichor
Summary: jaskier's anxiety manifests itself in many different waysgeralt is learning to read the signs
Relationships: Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia & Jaskier | Dandelion, Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Jaskier | Dandelion
Series: geraskier snippets [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1672132
Comments: 14
Kudos: 302





	your voice (it carries over)

**Author's Note:**

> heyo this is a bit different than my usual stuff!! which fills me with Anxiety(tm) but!!! here it is!! 
> 
> title is taken from elsa's song by the amazing devil which is the best song and should be listened to all of the time
> 
> thank u!!

_I._

It starts in the smallest of ways. Which is probably why it took him so long to pick up on it in the first place. Or at least that’s what Geralt tells himself on the days that the guilt bites a little too deep for him to banish. 

Sometimes it’s as simple as a word, or the absence of one. The way Jaskier’s eyes will glaze over, everything heavy and distant, as though he is seeing the world through a twisted glass. Sometimes they just stare blankly, like he isn’t seeing anything at all.

Geralt hates that look. 

Doesn’t like how calling the bard’s name doesn’t get the slightest twitch of reaction, as if he’s wandered off inside his own head, into a place Geralt can’t follow no matter how hard he tries. It makes his own lungs feel hollow, chest carved out and aching with something he’d be damned to examine too closely.

Mostly he hates the _silence_ of it all. Jaskier is a loud person in every sense of the word, he embraces his noise, revels in it even. Which only serves to make that fucking _silence_ so much worse.

It’s an awful foreign sort of quiet. Not the peaceable kind of comfortable companions, but the type that feels like smothering, like drowning, like sinking deep into the muck and not knowing how to find your way out. 

It tastes of defeat and that is a taste Geralt will never become accustomed to.

So, if he talks a bit more (if he lets his own voice fill the quiet with mindless tidbits and rambles if he asks ridiculous questions and manages to snag the bard’s attention, if only for a moment) who could blame him? 

_II._

Other times it begins with a movement. A jittery sort of thing. A knee bouncing up and down beside a bar stool, urgent although it has no reason to be. Fingers drumming on an otherwise soundless lute, the hollow thudding noise a rhythmless, empty thing. The dull rasp of dry hands tugging on dirtied hair, harsh and angry with someone or something it cannot find.

Over and over again. It’s the repetition that hurts. So insistent as it replays itself, a panicked loop. 

A trap.

There are things to be done to steady this sort of pain. Pressing his leg against the bard’s, covering twitching fingers with his own calloused palm, murmuring words of caution as hands get dangerously close to ripping out clumps of loose brown curls.

They are little things, so careful that one could mistake them for an accident, a coincidence. And yet the occasional relief that lights up Jaskier’s eyes, or even just the distraction the gestures provide, the quiet sigh he gives when comforted, are more than enough to prompt Geralt into action. 

They are little things but Geralt has come to understand that little things can go a very long way.

_III._

Occasionally, it appears in the form of a sort of stiffness instead. Like a too tightly wound spring poking through a wagon seat, or a tree bough encased in ice, dipping in a graceless arc back down to the ground.

The muscles in Jaskier’s shoulders tighten. As though an invisible weight presses on him, makes every step taut and agonizing. 

These moments bring something like fear into the witcher’s chest. Because try as he might this kind of burden is hard to help with. It isn’t the type to willingly share itself, or even make itself known beyond the hardening of a jaw, the rigidness of a movement. 

Most of all it scares him because it feels of finality, of decisions made too hastily. Of rash thoughts and even rasher actions. A stubborn, determined sort of hell.

Geralt knows it as the sort of tension seen right before the object in question _snaps._

_IV._

And snap Jaskier does. It is not a quick kind of break either, nothing clean about it. 

It happens one harsh, clipped remark at a time. Irritation rolls off the bard, as wild and unpredictable as the coast he loves so very much. It is a dangerous thing and Geralt sometimes wonders how much collateral damage Jaskier’s anxiety has left in its wake. 

Fortunately, a witcher is well-versed in the art of volatile tempers and fear-induced words. 

Knows how to let them glance off without striking their mark. They aren’t cruel words, nothing of the sort. Just short and forced out from behind gritted teeth. As if even the act of speaking is an annoyance, something so unlike Jaskier that Geralt nearly flinches. 

He knows there isn’t much to be done, that he needs to wait this out as he would any other storm. That there is no sense in blundering his way through it before it has calmed, that it will only suit to damage the both of them.

And yet the acceptance of it still feels like ash on his tongue.

_V._

There is a final piece, one of broken gasps and desperate pleading breaths. One that ends in shaking hands and hooded eyes. The kind that can only be helped by gentle hands and a tight embrace, strong enough to hold even shattering lungs together.

It is a devastating sort of conclusion.

That all of these struggles end in yet another source of panic. It’s something Geralt has come to know, to understand and acknowledge in the way that one notes all painful but necessary things. Like the cauterizing of a wound or the bleeding of an infection. 

Because when it is over, there is a peace settling over the bard, a kind of release that can only be born out of saltwater and sobs.

⁂

There is something to be said for the neverending back and forth of the ocean’s tide. It is not always a pretty thing, sometimes it is a churning disaster, an accident waiting to happen, bleak and grey. And yet so much happiness can be found along its shore, delighting in its delicate waves and colorful stones. Basking in the heat-soaked sand and lifting a face to its citrus and salt spray.

Yes, the tides are often unpredictable things. 

They shift. They hold troubles and delights, both of which are unknown to mankind. 

But at its core, the ocean is a beautiful joyous thing. 

The more Geralt thinks about it, the more he understands just what it is about the cerulean waves that captures, and does not release, Jaskier’s gaze. 

And in that moment Geralt realizes he has fallen in love with the ocean.


End file.
